A black hepatocellular carcinoma with Dubin-Johnson-like pigment and Mallory bodies: a histochemical and ultrastructural study.

A hepatocellular carcinoma which was predominately black was surgically excised from a noncirrhotic, asymptomatic 62-year-old white man. Brown-black, pigment granules, found only in the tumor cells, were histochemically and ultrastructurally identical to the hepatocellular pigment found in Dubin-Johnson syndrome. The latter pigment is thought to accumulate as a consequence of a genetically determined abnormality in the excretion of catecholamines and related substances.